For Bachmann, not quite the facts

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Michele Bachmann’s suggestion Saturday that the Revolutionary War began in Concord, N.H., rather than Lexington and Concord, Mass., marks the third time in recent months that the potential GOP presidential hopeful has committed a puzzling gaffe about history and current affairs.

Making her first trek to New Hampshire as a 2012 prospect, Bachmann told a GOP crowd in Manchester: “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord.”

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The Revolutionary War began, not in New Hampshire’s capital, but in the famous two towns more than 50 miles away in Massachusetts.

For Bachmann, who leads the House Tea Party caucus and champions a return to the Constitution, to get such basic facts wrong about the country’s birth is revealing.

Her comment wasn’t just an off-hand reference that she inserted in her remarks. At a fundraiser Friday night on the New Hampshire Seacoast, Bachmann said almost the exact same thing, according to the Minnesota Post.

“It’s your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world, you are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard,” Bachmann said.

Bachmann’s geographic mix-up prompted derision among some New Hampshire Republicans.

“Is she on her way to Lexington, N.H., now?” cracked Matt Suermann, who blogs for RedHampshire, in response to somebody who posted on Twitter that Bachmann had left the building.

Told of the congresswoman’s line, another prominent New Hampshire Republican asked: “Seriously, the real question is whether she knows she (got it wrong), I suspect not.”

The latest gaffe may not hurt her with those grass-roots activists who are attracted to her for her attacks against the Obama administration, but it could hamper her efforts to be taken seriously among the broader swath of Republicans she’d need to win the nomination.

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CORRECTION: Corrected by: Alex Byers @ 03/12/2011 09:48 PM
An earlier version of this story carried an incorrect dateline and reported the wrong location for where Rep. Bachmann made her incorrect historical statement about Lexington and Concord.
CORREX MADE BY BYERS PER RUSS at 947 on March 12.